


"Retourne-toi."

by cly31225



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/F, Héloïse's pov, POV First Person, Post-Canon, Sorry about that but I couldn't resist the reference to the epilogue, Written by a lesbian, so maybe that makes up for it, this is however a wlw fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21956704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cly31225/pseuds/cly31225
Summary: Héloïse saw her too.
Relationships: Marianne/Héloïse
Comments: 26
Kudos: 93





	"Retourne-toi."

**Author's Note:**

> For my wonderful girlfriend who I can never get enough of looking at.

I saw her again a first time.

I hadn’t been looking for her, or at least that’s what I told myself. Lately I had allowed myself to stay out a little longer and divert from my usual paths when I was taking walks in the evenings. Perhaps it wasn’t pure coincidence that the new paths tended to lead to places that displayed art or those with a nice view that made even my unschooled fingers itch to draw, but an interest in the arts was perfectly healthy and when I snuck small glances at the way students held their pencils and artist allowed the colours to flow, nobody needed to know what I was looking for.

Not even I really did until I found it. Found her.

She was wearing blue. It wasn't the same shade of blue that I had worn back when she had visited my life for a precious few days, but I still allowed myself to wish that she had picked it out with me in mind. 

She was sitting still, in a way only people sit still who are being drawn, with every breath carefully calculated, every itch dutifully ignored. Five women surrounded her, took her in like I did and then again not at all like I did, as they drew her on paper and I carved her into my mind, as they watched her with interest and I watched her with hunger. She didn't look back at them or at me. Her eyes were focused on a painting in the back of the room. A white moon ripped open a black sky and illuminated a lonely figure. I couldn't make out details, the painting was too far away from where I was watching secretly, but I had a feeling, one that I couldn't quite explain, that it was me, a memory or a dream or maybe both at once. Just like the sketches she had made while we'd both basked in the afterglow of having loved every part of each others bodies back in my childhood home.

I could sneak a peek at her tidily folded hands, when she turned a little, adjusted her pose to give her students a new perspective to draw. They were delicate yet strong, had had no problem holding me over water in the angry tides of the sea. Had held mine with a grip stronger than iron that last time we'd touched. Taking them in from afar, I wondered if this was what Marianne had felt seven years ago, when she had sketched my hands secretly behind a rock, while I had taken my walks around the beach, ignorant of what great wonder and pain the next week would bring. But unlike her back then, I didn't see her hands for the first time. I saw something familiar and warm and yet so beautifully new and exciting as she rubbed her thumb over her pointer finger, a gesture of hers entirely unknown to me. Her nails were still short and dutifully manicured, her skin still soft despite the hard work she did every day. These hands were made to love and knowing her that's what they did. She had never been one to waste much time on feeling nothing.

Any moment she could have turned and seen me and I used that as an excuse to watch her head closely. I took in the exact shade of her skin that I had forgotten over the years with only a half-coloured sketch in a yellowish book to remind me, which was, albeit beautiful, unable to quite carry what it was supposed to. A few loose strands of her dark hair had fallen into her neck and my fingers itched to brush them away and kiss the skin where they had laid. I wondered, if it would have felt just as electrifying as the first time, or maybe even more so, after I had imagined it for seven years, drawn out every second of my dreams of her, or if I would feel nothing but calmness and warmth, like I was coming home.

I waited until the very last student had packed up and closed the door behind herself. Some tension left Marianne's back, when the room was empty and she believed herself alone, and I almost turned away, ashamed of intruding in her privacy like that. But just like she had seven years ago, I stayed and watched. I watched her file the students' sketches, stack the chairs, put away the chalk. Only when everything was clean and tidy and there was nothing else to do, did she step in front of the painting that she had stared at for half an hour or more since I had walked by and spotted her through a window. After a minute of silently taking it in, her hand jerked slightly, as if she was going to touch the painting, but instead it changed its course, and reached for a piece of cloth that she pulled over the dark canvas. When she left the room, I left too.

I never dared to return. What I had done and thought in those few stolen minutes that I had been watching her in secret had been sinful, forbidden, and I had lost my lust for rebellion six years ago together with my freedom. Perhaps it was better like that. Perhaps I had never been meant to invent. My hands weren't meant to create, unlike hers.

I saw her again a last time. This time she saw me too.

Her laugh still sounded the same. She still held herself with the same kind of tension, as if she was ready to fight the world at any moment. She still wore her grey hair just the way she had worn it back when it had been as dark as her eyes. She still touched her forehead when she didn’t know what to say. She still took my breath away without even noticing.

It was her first exhibition after decades of hiding behind her father’s signature and I wasn’t ashamed of being grateful for the chance his departure had brought her. She would have deserved this kind of recognition years ago. Long before I had met her.

Since then, her art had become softer. Less angry. Less worried. Almost dreamlike.

Some of it I recognized although I had never seen it before. Eurydice waving her goodbye to Orpheus as she allowed him to leave her. An assortment of plants titled 'life givers' that would be a mystery to about half of the visitors. Two fingers digging deep into curled pages of a thick book.

I stopped in front of a portrait. A woman, lounging lazily on an unmade bed. The beautiful purple cloth that she was embroidering was falling over her lap. Her hair may have been red at some point, but time had robbed it of most of its colour. She was looking directly at the viewer, or really, she was looking at Marianne, a slight twinkle in her eyes, the ghost of a smile on her lips. I wondered if it was obvious to everyone in the room that Marianne loved her, or if only I saw it, because she had loved me once too.

When I turned, my eyes met hers.

She didn’t recognize me. For one second her gaze touched me, then it swept past and fondly laid on the portrait. A small smile played with the corners of her lips, and she thoughtlessly brushed her hand over a fold in her dress.

It was purple.


End file.
